


the promised land

by irreputablyyours



Series: younger than yesterday [1]
Category: Music RPF, Oasis (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:34:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28423257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irreputablyyours/pseuds/irreputablyyours
Summary: Liam is his soulmate. Fucking hell,Liam is his soulmate.
Relationships: Liam Gallagher/Noel Gallagher
Series: younger than yesterday [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2139474
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28





	the promised land

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jeevey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jeevey/gifts).



> For Jeevey. Hope you like!!

_1981_

“Noely, what is that?”

Noel glances down to find Liam tugging at his wrist impatiently. He’s eight years old and nosy as fuck, so of course he’s decided that Noel’s sleeve simply _had_ to be rolled up. He’s clutching Noel’s cheap-as-fuck black watch in his hand, his grubby fingers hovering over the mark on Noel’s wrist.

“Nothing,” Noel says, rolling his sleeve up and snatching back his watch. Liam pouts. “But you’ve got a weird mark on yer wrist! Does mam know? Wait-” His eyes light up as though he’s come upon a magnificent realization, “-Did you get a tattoo?”

Noel’s hand drops instinctively to trace over the mark on his wrist. He rolls his eyes, trying his best to put on his watch discreetly.

“Yeah, Liam, I got a fucking tattoo. With all me money, y’know,” Liam would probably believe that. Noel wonders if he’d ever been so stupid to think that ten quid was enough to buy yourself a house. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’s sheltered Liam, somehow, that at eight Noel had already known that shite.

Liam grins at him. “Can I get one, then?”

“No.”

Liam’s smile falls. “But I want one! We’ll match!”

Noel briefly considers explaining to Liam that no, he couldn’t get a tattoo. Partially because he was eight and he’d never stop fucking crying about how much it hurt, and partially because it wasn’t a tattoo.

Apparently, somewhere out there, Noel had a soulmate.

Soulmates, Noel briefly considers telling his little brother, were one-in-a-million chance bonds between people. Noel could name maybe three people he knew _of_ who’d had marks, and that included celebrities and historical figures. No one knew _why_ these things happened: science couldn’t explain it and the Catholic Church put it down as an act of God.

Apparently you were supposed to love your soulmate so much you’d go to the ends of the earth for them. Travel the world, start wars, write epic poems and ballads and all that shite.

Small fucking problem: the marks _didn’t tell you who your fucking soulmate was._ Noel’s mark is a glittering star, silvery-white and pale against his skin. It glimmers in low light and sometimes it’ll fucking _glow_ and Noel’ll have no idea why. Somewhere out there, apparently, there’s someone who he’ll love more than life itself, and that person’s entire being is best represented by a Biblical-looking star.

Noel really hopes he never meets them.

“Couldn’t, I’ll always be cooler than you,” He says, and drags Liam home to their home. Paul and his bird have got a movie playing, and of course it’s some trite shite about soulmates. The screen shows a dark-haired man in a sharp suit revealing to a royal-looking blonde the crown-shaped mark on his wrist. They kiss, the music swelling epically.

Noel looks at the screen, glances down at his covered wrist, and heads to his room, wondering whether Paul’ll notice if Noel grabs his guitar. He does, and Noel ends up sitting on his bed, reading some crappy book from the library, trying to ignore Liam’s requests to see his supposed ‘tattoo’ again.

* * *

_1991_

The Boardwalk is hot as hell and crowded when Noel walks in, Louise on his arm and a few of his mates already there. Her hand’s clasped in his, fingers just brushing his wrist. He’d shown her his mark a week ago, and he’s almost convinced it’s _her,_ that against all odds he’s actually found his soulmate.

He tries not to think about it, though. The idea just doesn’t quite sit right with him: he thinks it’s something to do with the whole predestined-love thing, but in the back of his head a voice is telling him that maybe he’s just seeing what he wants to see with Louise, that she’s not really his soulmate at all and he’s just fucking infatuated.

He shakes his head, pulling his attention back to where Liam and his mates are putting things together on the stage. Liam’s rolling back his shoulders, staring out at the crowd. He’s tapping his foot – nervous tick. Noel wonders why – Liam’s never had a problem with people or crowds before.

His eyes sweep over the crowd until his gaze lands on Noel. He’s trying to hide his grin, Noel can tell, but Liam’s never been any good at disguising his emotions. Eventually the drummer starts, and then one of Liam’s mates on the bass – and Liam grabs the microphone, and. Noel’s whole world shifts right on its fucking axis.

First thing: Liam can actually sing. He’s fucking good at it, in spite of the fact that his mates clearly don’t know the difference between a drumstick and a piece of celery. Noel’s spent the last three minutes nattering like a moron to Louise about how they might actually just have caught onto something.

Second thing: He’s looking out onto the crowd with this fire in his eyes. He looks like a man possessed, like a fucking messiah. He looks like a _star_.

Third thing: The mark on Noel’s wrist is burning.

He tears his gaze away from the stage and presses two fingers to his wrist. It’s unnaturally hot. Checking that Louise isn’t watching, he pulls down his watch and looks at the star. It’s glowing, alright.

Noel glances between his wrist and Liam. He thinks he might be losing his mind.

He stays completely still. Outside his head, the song’s words are ringing. He notes with passing interest the drum beat on the song that’s going _take me while I’m young, take me when I’m not too strong,_ his brain clouded with passages he’d read about soulmates. Your one and only. The person who completed you. The most important person in your life. The person who you were wholeheartedly _in love with._

He stares blankly at the wall behind Liam. His watch slips out of his hand and hits the floor.

...You know the fucking kicker? Most soulbonds weren’t even reciprocal.

Vainly, Noel searches his memory for a single time he’d seen a mark on Liam, anything other than the usual grime and grass stains and ink blots that came with being teenaged and stupid. Nothing.

He turns his gaze back to Liam, thinking, dizzy: _that’s him. That’s_ it. _My soulmate’s been right under my nose this entire time._ He wants to vomit.

People leave and the band stops playing and Louise tugs insistently on his arm. Noel blinks out of his daze.

Liam’s there when he comes to.

“Whaddya think?” he’s saying, an imploring note in his voice. Noel’s running through every memory he has, and suddenly a fictional one hits him – Liam, fingers curved against Noel’s bare shoulder, begging Noel for – _something_ – with that same tone of voice.

“It was fucking shit,” He says, and doesn’t look Liam in the eye.

He doesn’t hear what Liam says to that – barely even notices how his brother’s shoulders drop, how the excitement fades from his eyes. He feels like he’s stuck underwater, drowning.

/

Of course they hit the bar afterwards, and of course Louise leaves him, and of course Liam drinks too much, and of course Noel ends up dragging him back home. His brother lets Noel guide him into the room before collapsing on his bed – the very same one in the room they’d shared throughout childhood.

Noel turns to leave, trying to think if there’s any place he can pick up a watch at this hour.

“Noel,” Liam says.

“Yeah?” Noel turns.

“Sit next to me.”

“Why?”

“’Cause you’re my brother and I love you.”

Noel frowns.

“’Cause I want you to.”

Noel raises an eyebrow.

“Please.”

Noel bites his lip. “Say it again,” he says, and Liam must be really fucking pissed, because he looks at Noel with wide eyes and says, “Please,” using that same voice he used when he was five and trying to get Noel to buy him candy at the shop. He’s really fucking pretty, Noel thinks out of nowhere, and the thought rolls about in his head: _Liam’s really fucking pretty._ He’s had it before.

Noel takes one step towards him, and then another and another, until the toes of his shoes are touching Liam’s. Liam, who’s smiling, reaching up and grabbing Noel’s hand.

His fingers just graze Noel’s bare wrist. Noel stifles a gasp.

Liam looks at him curiously. He does it again, and Noel’s knees almost buckle. Fuck, he’d never – Louise had touched his mark once or twice, but it’d never felt like this.

He’s straddling Liam, now, hands pressed against the wall behind his brother’s head. Liam’s still got his hand wrapped around Noel’s wrist, dragging it down to look at.

“I knew it,” he says. Not smug – just a fact, as though he was reading out tomorrow’s weather. His other hand rests on Noel’s hip, tracing lines there. Slowly, he reaches up, tugging up his sleeve to his elbow, spits on his palm, and rubs the skin there clean. Fucking – makeup? Liam used makeup to cover his mark?

Just above his wrist, there’s a red guitar.

“Got it when I was nine, I think” Liam says. “You’re supposed to get ‘em earlier, right?”

Soulmarks were supposed to show up at the moment you soulmate because _your soulmate –_ the minute they became the person who would suit you perfectly. Noel’d got his when he was nine – Liam had been four. He thinks it was the first time where Liam saw Da beat Noel up and actually processed what the fuck was going on.

Liam had got his at the same age. Noel had been fourteen – fuck, that was the year he picked up a guitar. A flood of half-formed theories are messing around in his head. He pushes them aside. He won’t – he _can’t_ – think about it.

“How’d you even hide it?”

Liam shrugs. “Knew you hid yours, so I nicked some of that contouring shit and threw it on. Wasn’t that big a deal if anyone found out, could just say I got pissed and got meself a tattoo. But I just – I did what you did, and I never bothered to stop.”

“You fucking idiot,” He gasps out, barely even knowing why. He tilts his forehead against Liam’s, so that their gazes meet. “I’m gonna fucking kill you one day.” He digs his nails into the skin of Liam’s arm, right next to the soulmark. Liam bites his lip when Noel runs his finger over the mark, taking Liam’s wrist to his lips and pressing a delicate kiss there.

Liam’s eyes are wide like saucers. Noel remembers reading somewhere that soulmates could share thoughts. It sounded like rubbish to him at the time, but right now he could swear he can hear Liam thinking _holy fuck_ as though the thought was his own.

Liam snakes his hand around Noel’s waist, pulling him closer. He pops that buttons on Noel’s shirt slowly, running his hand over Noel’s chest, eager to touch.

“’Can’t,” Liam says, sounding breathless. “You’re stuck with me. Forever.” His eyes light up at that. Noel wants to hit him upside his fucking cracked skull. The little fucker _likes_ the idea of him and Noel being soulmates. Of them – kissing and touching and _being in love with_ each other and all that shite. God, he’s fucked in the head.

Noel must be a bit fucked in the head too, though, because he’s not stopping him.

“God help me,” Noel bites out. “God fucking help me,” he says again, just for good measure. Although it’s goddamned clear that He’s got no intention of doing that, because Liam’s pressing kisses to Noel’s jaw now, and Noel doesn’t think he could stop him. Doesn’t think he knows how.

/

(In the morning, he’ll wake up and run away, and buy a watch that he never takes off. In the next year, he’ll avoid Liam’s eyes even though he’ll write albums for him as easily as he breathes. They’ll fuck and fight and take over the world and he’ll have moments where he _believes,_ in God or destiny or whatever, believes that there’s nothing in the world other than the two of them.

In the next decade, he’ll find Meg, and then Sara, and each time he’ll convince himself that destiny had fucked up, that he was meant to be with her and not Liam. He’ll have kids and lie about his mark. He’ll hate Liam more than he loves him and eventually it’ll kill them and the band both, and he’ll leave, because fuck destiny and fuck doing what anyone else tells you. He’ll understand why Liam’s mark was a red guitar. His star mark will never shine quite as bright. He’ll publish an interview statement damning the idea of soulmates to hell just to think of how Liam’ll be hurt because of it. He’ll do all that, and he won’t regret it.

Except, sometimes, he’ll walk outside onto the roof in the middle of the night, and stare out at the stars, rubbing his fingers on his wrist. _Let me be the one who shines with you,_ he’ll have written, and it’ll ring true even a quarter of a century later. In the next three decades, he’ll love Liam like he breathes, and he’ll discover he has an uncanny ability to survive suffocation.

So it goes.)

/

He wakes up in the middle of the night. Liam looks gorgeous in the moonlight. He’s got his hand laying on Noel’s chest, right over his heart, as though he can’t get enough of touching him.

Noel stares out the window to the stars, the beat to a song tapping over and over in his head. He looks to Liam again, and allows himself a small, quiet smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Oasis' [first](http://www.oasis-recordinginfo.co.uk/?page_id=915) [gig](https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/oasis-first-ever-setlist-with-noel-gallagher/) was at the Broadwalk in Machester, in August 1991. Noel was (as per Tony) [present](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10633909-oasis) in the audience, and was talking excitedly to Louise about how that band had potential, but he told Liam they sounded like 'fucking shit'. The song mentioned is [Take Me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4HFtUIxalk&feature=emb_title), a song co-written by Liam and Bonehead that they never formally recorded. Noel also referred to Louise as [his soulmate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noel_Gallagher#Personal_life) at one point.
> 
> Also I was going to continue this through the entire timeline but a) I wanted to finish it off before the New Year and b) I wanted it to be happy, and taking this AU post-split would not be happy lol.


End file.
